Teachers grumble and moan about how
politicians' love affair with tests has turned education into a grim
mission to teach creative young minds how to darken the ovals
completely and neatly.

Parents complain about the lost arts and
athletics, the exciting labs and imaginative lessons that schools
cut out to make way for classes on the art and science of taking
standardized tests.

But rarely do public schools take a stand on
behalf of the children left behind by the very law that promises to
carry them forward.

This summer, Bailey's Elementary School for
the Arts and Sciences in Falls Church put down a marker. A letter
sent to every parent said teachers are being forced to spend
"valuable instructional time preparing students to take the
Standards of Learning tests, to the exclusion of activities that
extend and deepen student learning, integrate the arts with content,
and allow students to develop and pursue their own questions."

The letter said Bailey's, which as Fairfax
County's first magnet elementary school attracts immigrant families
from its Culmore neighborhood and more affluent families from across
the county, will still teach children how to think like scientists
and historians, even though "this is not what standardized tests
measure or encourage."

The letter was more than an ideological
tract. It was a warning to parents that in the next few weeks, they
may find their school declared failing under the federal
government's No Child Left Behind protocols.

The problem is that about 77 percent of
Bailey's students are immigrants, many of whom come to school
knowing little or no English. The law requires the school to bring
an ever higher percentage of those students up to grade level each
year. Bailey's, like most schools with large populations of poor or
non-English-speaking students, isn't hitting its numbers.

"It's an ax hanging over our heads," says
Jean Frey, the principal, who has to explain to parents that if
Bailey's is declared failing, the county could fire its teachers,
and families would have the right to transfer to another school.

"I have no problem with being accountable,"
Frey says. "As a citizen, I want these kids to grow up to be
literate problem-solvers." But she will not shutter her science lab,
pull the plug on theatrical productions or tell teachers to scrap a
literature discussion to drill kids on test facts.

"The testing itself is enormously
time-consuming," Frey says. "We give up over two weeks in May to the
tests. So the rest of the year, we try very hard not to do 'SOL Prep
Time,' like many schools do. How important is knowing how to fill in
ABCD? I don't do that very often as an adult."

This is a school that remains open to
experiment even while wearing the straitjacket of No Child Left
Behind. It has just completed a five-year "looping," in which one
class stayed with the same teacher from first through fifth grades,
producing powerful emotional bonds. While many schools hack away at
the arts to focus on test-taking skills, Bailey's has a busy
black-box theater, a TV studio in which students produce a daily
newscast and four visual arts teachers.

Reaction to Bailey's defense of its approach
has been almost uniformly supportive. David Itkin, father of a
second-grader, called the letter "eloquent and brave." Other parents
have encouraged teachers to follow their passions in their lessons.
And more than twice as many families apply for a spot in Bailey's
magnet program as can be admitted.

Still, "it's going to look like we're a
failing school when really we're a model school," says teacher
Stephanie Fillman. "And that makes us really angry because we know
what we're doing is right."

To keep Bailey's test participation numbers
high enough to avoid the failure tag, Frey had to make children who
had just arrived from other countries sit down and fill out bubbles.

"I would love to hear what they said at home
that night," she says. "They were totally mystified. One child could
say 'Hello' and another just waved; they'd been here one week and 10
days. But I had to make them sit here for two hours, three days a
week, filling in circles so we could hit the 95 percent
participation target. What a waste."